Kafka’s brides in Prague

The only way to get any free time on a business trip is to get up early. And that’s what I did today, in Prague.

Charles Bridge, Prague

Mind you, this was after a night on the beer, Czech beer at that! So I only got to the bridge at 7.30, too late for the sunrise. But what a place Prague is – very beautiful, very atmospheric, cobbles, lamps and narrow streets. To me, it felt slightly sleepy, in a surreal way. A bit Kafkaesque…

There is definitely something slightly surreal here. A juxtaposition of old and new, the quaint with the incongruous…

But then the surrealist element crops up again. The fantastical astro clock, baby off the bridge, a bloke asleep on the job etc. All a tinge of weirdness.

And last but not least, my very own moment of complete weirdness. 8 o’clock on a freezing morning, a gang of newly-weds, from the East, posing by the clock. The must have been absolutely shiveringly cold. Why? What were they doing? Why a whole group of them? So far from home? Kafka would have loved it.

I first visited Prague in ’77 – a different world then. The city looked as though it were lit by 40 watt bulbs, nobody on the streets after 9.30 PM, no tourists except from the East and the pervasive smell from sulphorous brown coal. I have some slides somewhere, I’ll dig them out one of these days…..
Before going there I suggest reading anything by B.Hrabal “I served the king of England” is a good start.